Installation
============


Checkout from git
-----------------

If you use the tarball, you can just skip that section. If you checked out the
kexec-tools from git repository, you have to build the Autoconf-generated
file yourself with running

    ./bootstrap

You have to install "autoconf" for that. After that, you should have a file
called "configure" in the top-level directory of kexec-tools, and you can
continue with the next step.


General
-------

You should check first if your favourite Linux distribution doesn't offer a
package. If that package is recent enough, you should consider using that
package instead.

However, if you want to install kexec-tools from sources

 (1) Run ./configure [--prefix=/usr/local] [options]...
     e.g.

        ./configure --prefix=/usr/local

     For a full list of options run

        ./configure --help

 (2) Run make

        make

 (3) To install kexec-tools
     After following the above instructions to build-kexec tools, run

        make install


Static compilation
------------------

To compile kexec-tools statically (i.e., independent of libraries that are
present on the system), use

    LDFLAGS=-static ./configure <options>

instead.


Cross compilation
-----------------

Because kexec is also used in the embedded world, cross-compilation is
supported. You cannot only set "CC", "LD", "CCFLAGS" and "LDFLAGS" environment
variables for the ./configure call as usual, you can also set

    TARGET_CC       -- the C compiler used for files that should run on the
                       target
    TARGET_CCFLAGS  -- compilation flags for $TARGET_CC
    TARGET_LD       -- linker used for files that should run on the
                       target

Because the build process also requires files that must be executed during the
build, you also need a host compiler, only the target compiler is not enough.

    BUILD_CC        -- the C compiler used for files that should run on the
                       host (the system that builds the kexec-tools)
    BUILD_CFLAGS    -- compilation flags for $BUILD_CC